Dalton McGuinty has just announced that he will give $650 million to the auto industry to promote the development of greener cars.

By my calculation, assuming everyone was contributing equally (which they sure as hell are not), $50 of that is mine and I bloody well want it back!

The car companies are spending their own resources to develop green technology because it's what's going to generate more business for them and make them more money. I don't need the government handing them my money to try and drag them out of debt and help them be profitable.

I'd much rather have that $50 to buy another tank of gas!

It's interesting to note that when he was last elected, he ripped me off for hundreds of dollars because we apparently can't afford our overly generous health care system. Now he's giving money away to giant car corporations?

I've said it before and I'll say it again, anyone who votes for McGuinty's Ontario Liberals this time around has got to be just plain stupid. They've proven themselves to be just as trustworthy as the Federal Liberal party, and are only doing their part to help themselves to our money, while liberating us of whatever little bit of it we're currently allowed to keep and spend.

Apparently Ikea is going to start setting aside parking spaces reserved for hybrid or fuel efficient cars. How they determine who qualifies is yet to be disclosed. Perhaps the same idiot who determined which cars or "trucks" qualified for the government rebates will make a list for them.

It pisses me off when people misuse handicap parking spaces, and I'm more than happy to give up spots reserved for knocked up chicks, but I'll be damned if I think I should park farther way so tree huggers can be closer to the doors!!!

Will they be able to give out tickets? Will they have cars towed? Or will tree huggers just key your car if you're parked in one of these spaces?

This is something I just can't respect or get behind.

If they want to be environmentally conscious, they should reserve spaces for gas guzzlers so they don't have to drive up and down the aisles looking for a spot. If the hybrids make a couple extra laps trying to find one, it's of far less impact to the environment.

I haven't signed up for Facebook. I don't feel the need to. So far as I gather, it's for getting in touch with people you haven't been in touch with for ages. I think that if those people wanted to be in touch with me, they'd find that I am perfectly easy to find as it is, and doesn't need to be any easier.

I'm not interested in making contact just for the sake of making contact.

That's all besides the point though. The people I know who frequent Facebook have been making it out to be a form of online crack. An addiction they're finding more and more drawn to.

With that in mind, I have little doubt that it's not much different than any other online site that takes up a lot of people's time, and brings down employee productivity in the process. With that in mind, hearing that the Canadian government's IT people have decided to block it from employee's use didn't surprise me at all.

What's interesting about this though is that Facebook chief privacy officer Chris Kelly chimed in on this to say the following:

"We're puzzled by why governments would ban access to Facebook," said Kelly, based at its corporate headquarters in Palo Alto, California, who was in Toronto on business unrelated to the ban.

"We're concerned about this because we think it's taking a tool away from users, a very powerful tool," he said, noting Facebook has made "preliminary contact" with Ontario officials to rectify the situation.

"We hope that the usefulness of the tool shines through."

I really hope that companies don't start feeling that they can strong-arm employers into allowing employees access to their sites. This isn't political. It's just good business policy. In my opinion, most of the Internet should be banned from use by employers, my own site included. The Internet is a huge productivity killer, and unless there's a specific reason you need to access a site from work, I hardly think people are in a position to challenge these sorts of policies. People might not like it, but you can't argue that it's good for business.

Of course, killing morale isn't necessarily a good business move either, so there's probably a fine line out there that I'm in no way ready to start defining.

Just suffice it to say that I think Mr. Kelly should mind his business and not try to push his nose into other businesses policies.

Ultimately, in a few months there will be another huge fad site sweeping the Internet, and that one should be banned to. Just because they don't want to be, doesn't mean they shouldn't be.

The cause of the fire is apparently not known, but I'm going to chime in and suggest maybe someone left one of their programmable coffeemakers plugged in and it randomly turned itself on in the middle of the night and set itself ablaze.

We had one of those. Complete piece of garbage. Serves them right. Better their house than mine.

Hopefully they have another one nearby filled with water. Surely it'll leak enough to put out the fire caused by the first one.